EULOGY FOR DR. JOSEPH ZELIBOR Given by Dr. Rita Colwell, Director, National Science Foundation October 22, 1998

By 1983, we both agreed that if he was going to complete his Ph.D. thesis, he had better work full-time. By then, Jody had discovered that he really loved science and especially research. However, the entrepreneurial spirit never left him. While he was a full-time graduate student, he ran a tree farm and, in addition, he was always into some venture or another - usually a commercial venture. But he was diligent and committed to his research and published about a dozen papers while working in my laboratory at the University of Maryland.

Jody worked mainly on the geomicrobiology of manganese in the marine environment and developed a direct microscopic method for enumerating metal-resistant bacteria, using as a study site an arsenic-contaminated monitoring well at Aberdeen, Maryland. He studied the role of bacterial plasmids in manganese oxidation and the distribution of metal-resistant bacteria related to the concentration of heavy metals in the environment. Ever an entrepreneurial spirit, he filed a patent for one of these processes.

I wasn't always sure what Jody would dream up next, during his Ph.D. years, but I could always count on his finishing what he started. During the time Jody was in my laboratory, there were many exciting projects underway. The laboratory team included two dozen students, post-docs, technicians, and visiting scientists from Asia, Europe, and Africa. The laboratory was always crowded and active. It was an exhilarating environment. Everybody worked energetically, and there was a buzz of creativity in the laboratory. I will always remember Jody as a part of that wonderful, happy time - dreaming of the next wild experiment, working very hard till late at night, and then with the rest of the laboratory team, going to the Rendezvous at College Park late on Friday afternoons: "TGIF" at the "Vous" became a laboratory tradition.

Jody was both conscientious and very proud of his work, and he wanted to leave a mark. He has, indeed, left his mark on the many friends who enjoyed his company and his constantly active mind. To borrow from the poet, John Gillespie Magee, Jr., 1941, High Flight,

"He has slipped the surly bonds of earth; his spirit is free to soar, gliding above the clouds, and resting among the stars."

Today's workshop was organized by Jody Zelibor. The background and focus overlaps with program interests of NSF: life in extreme environments (LEXEN), recognizing that life flourishes on this planet in an incredibly wide range of environments - from high salt lagoons, in the desert, volcanoes, and polar ice. These environments may be relevant to the very harsh conditions that exist now or may have existed on other planets.

The study of microbial life forms in extreme environments, in which they exist here on earth, can provide good insight into how organisms adapt to diverse environments, and how they illuminate the limits within which life can exist. The examples of thermophiles and psychrophiles are familiar - thermophiles flourish in boiling hot environments such as found at Yellowstone Park and at hydrothermal vents. Life forms in the frozen environments of the dry valleys of Antarctica, within ice flows of the high arctic, and in the ice sheets that cover Antarctica excite the imagination. Some of the most exciting work, to be covered in this workshop, deals with the Lake Vostok coring studies in the Antarctic. Deep ice cores from which nucleic acids are being extracted will determine what sort of ancient and prehistoric life forms existed.

This knowledge will form the basis of detecting and understanding life forms that may exist beyond our own planet and for developing new products and processes. Thus, at NSF, LEXEN is a highly interdisciplinary, integrated research activity. It involves directorates of biosciences, bioengineering, geosciences, mathematical and physical sciences, and polar programs.

I urge you to be creative as you participate in this workshop. Do as Jody Zelibor would have wished you to do - think a bit on the wild side - about possibilities of new ways of assessing and understanding the limits of life forms in structure, function, and survival under the harshest conditions.